When we left off last time, I’d discovered a bounty of mud dauber nests after removing the forward upper skin. I decided to take a sort of thorough approach to cleaning this up, even though who knows how many new nests will get built this spring. To do this, I essentially tore apart all the avionics behind the panel – removing each component in turn, cleaning it off, and then finally removing the avionics shelf itself. Yup, pretty dirty:
From there I segued into…thinking a lot about what to do next. The routing for the ignition and fuel flow wiring through the baffles was the driver for doing the baffle work, and I’ve been looking at those, but I think I’ve got more stuff to worry about. Previously I’d just bought one two-hole wire grommet to accommodate the wires going through the baffles, and convinced myself that was fine, but after doing some more tinkering, I think I’m going to order another one. All in all, I need to pass through the four-wire bundle for the ignition coil, a three-wire shielded bundle for the fuel flow sensor, and two shielded four-wire bundles for the crank sensor. After some trial fitting I’m thinking I want to do one passthrough hole for each, rather than trying to combine them.
There’s also the question of routing the crank sensor wires through the baffles on the forward side. I think I’m going to just have to drill a hole and use a snap bushing there, unless I decide to route those wires under the cylinders…which would preclude the need for a second passthrough grommet as mentioned above, but would also put those wires down in the hot area near the exhaust. It would also sort of undermine the work I did to protect the wires from damage from a thrown alternator belt. But I dunno, the area where I’d need to drill that hole through the forward baffle is pretty tight…I’ve got to think on this some more, and probably eventually just tell myself to stop waffling and pick a direction…